Bach, Beethoven, and the Boys
Music History as It Ought to Be Taught
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Narrated by:
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Jean-Michel George
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By:
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David W. Barber
About this listen
David W. Barber has delighted fans around the world with Accidentals on Purpose, When the Fat Lady Sings, and other internationally best-selling books of musical humor. His best-selling Bach, Beethoven and the Boys chronicles the lives of the great (and not-so-great) composers, exploring their sex lives, exposing their foibles, and expanding on our understanding of these all-too-human creatures.
Filled with information, interesting facts, and trivia, this hilarious history covers music from Gregorian chant to the mess we're in now. From Bach's laundry lists to Beethoven's bowel problems, from Gesualdo's kinky fetishes to Cage's mushroom madness, Barber tells tales out of school that ought to be put back there (think how much more fun it would be if they taught this stuff).
"My heartiest commendation for an admirable work of scholarship.... I will not say again that it is funny, since this will compel you to set your jaw and dare Barber to make you laugh." (Anthony Burgess on Bach, Beethoven and the Boys)
©1986 David W. Barber (P)2018 David W. BarberListeners also enjoyed...
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Elegant, profound, and riveting, Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know illuminates not only the complex relationships between three of the greatest writers in the English language and their fathers, but also illustrates the surprising ways these men surface in their work. Through these stories of fathers and sons, Tóibín recounts the resistance to English cultural domination, the birth of modern Irish cultural identity, and the extraordinary contributions of these complex and masterful authors.
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Eminently re-readable
- By Ellen-A on 01-02-19
By: Colm Toibin
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The Club
- Johnson, Boswell, and the Friends Who Shaped an Age
- By: Leo Damrosch
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 15 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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In 1763, the painter Joshua Reynolds proposed to his friend Samuel Johnson that they invite a few friends to join them every Friday at the Turk's Head Tavern in London to dine, drink, and talk until midnight. Eventually, the group came to include among its members Edmund Burke, Adam Smith, Edward Gibbon, and James Boswell. It was known simply as "the Club". In this captivating audiobook, Leo Damrosch brings alive a brilliant, competitive, and eccentric cast of characters.
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Wonderful survey
- By Tad Davis on 05-10-19
By: Leo Damrosch
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Tearing Down the Wall of Sound
- The Rise and Fall of Phil Spector
- By: Mick Brown
- Narrated by: Ray Porter
- Length: 17 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Phil Spector, born in the Bronx in 1940, grew up an outsider despised by his peers. But he formed a band, and had a number-one hit with "To Know Him Is to Love Him". He quickly became the top producer of early rock and roll and the originator of such girl groups as the Ronettes. Hit followed hit, and for all of them he used a new recording style called the "wall of sound". But the reign of the boy-man who owned pop music was doomed, and Spector spiraled into paranoid isolation and peculiar behavior.
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Descent Into Madness
- By Chris on 06-11-12
By: Mick Brown
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Famous Father Girl
- A Memoir of Growing Up Bernstein
- By: Jamie Bernstein
- Narrated by: Jamie Bernstein
- Length: 10 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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The oldest daughter of revered composer/conductor Leonard Bernstein offers a rare look at her father on the centennial of his birth in a deeply intimate and broadly evocative memoir. The composer of On the Town and West Side Story, chief conductor of the New York Philharmonic, television star, humanitarian, friend of the powerful and influential, and the life of every party, Leonard Bernstein was an enormous celebrity during one of the headiest periods of American cultural life, as well as the most protean musician in 20th-century America.
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Can't say enough good things
- By barbara on 10-10-18
By: Jamie Bernstein
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The Noise of Time
- By: Julian Barnes
- Narrated by: Daniel Philpott
- Length: 5 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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In May 1937, a man in his early 30s waits by the lift of a Leningrad apartment block. He waits all through the night, expecting to be taken away to the Big House. Any celebrity he has known in the previous decade is no use to him now, and few who are taken to the Big House ever return.
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Art belongs to everybody and nobody.
- By Darwin8u on 06-13-16
By: Julian Barnes
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World’s End
- The Lanny Budd Novels, Book 1
- By: Upton Sinclair
- Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot
- Length: 26 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Lanning “Lanny” Budd spends his first 13 years in Europe, living at the center of his mother’s glamourous circle of friends on the French Riviera. In 1913, he enters a prestigious Swiss boarding school and befriends Rick, an English boy, and Kurt, a German. The three schoolmates are privileged, happy, and precocious - but their world is about to come to an abrupt and violent end. When the gathering storm clouds of war finally burst, raining chaos and death over the continent, Lanny must put the innocence of youth behind him.
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didn't finish
- By Bird Miller on 05-08-22
By: Upton Sinclair
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City Boy
- My Life in New York During the 1960s and '70s
- By: Edmund White
- Narrated by: Robert Blumenfeld
- Length: 9 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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In the New York of the 1970s, in the wake of Stonewall and in the midst of economic collapse, you might find the likes of Jasper Johns and William Burroughs at the next cocktail party, and you were as likely to be caught arguing Marx at the New York City Ballet as cruising for sex in the warehouses and parked trucks along the Hudson. This is the New York that Edmund White portrays in City Boy: a place of enormous intrigue and artistic tumult.
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Pretense upon pretense.
- By Shalin Desai on 06-01-15
By: Edmund White
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Made in Scotland
- My Grand Adventures in a Wee Country
- By: Billy Connolly
- Narrated by: Gordon Kennedy
- Length: 6 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Billy Connolly may be a citizen of the world, but in his heart he's never been far from his homeland. Made in Scotland is Billy's unique and intimate portrait of his native Scotland, a love letter to the places and people that made him. It's an adventure inspired by a single incident: the moment Billy received his Knighthood and was asked, 'How does it feel to have achieved all this when you came from nothing?' His response was, 'But I did come from something!'
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I can't believe I wasted a credit on this blather.
- By J. M. Popa on 01-23-20
By: Billy Connolly
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Jonathan Swift: His Life and His World
- By: Leo Damrosch
- Narrated by: David Stifel
- Length: 20 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Jonathan Swift is best remembered today as the author of Gulliver’s Travels, the satiric fantasy that quickly became a classic and has remained in print for nearly three centuries. Yet Swift also wrote many other influential works, was a major political and religious figure in his time, and became a national hero, beloved for his fierce protest against English exploitation of his native Ireland. What is really known today about the enigmatic man behind these accomplishments? Can the facts of his life be separated from the fictions?
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JOHNATHAN SWIFT AND POWER OF THE PEN
- By chetyarbrough.blog on 09-30-14
By: Leo Damrosch
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Bygone Badass Broads
- 52 Forgotten Women Who Changed the World
- By: Mackenzi Lee
- Narrated by: Lucy James
- Length: 4 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Based on Mackenzi Lee's popular weekly Twitter series of the same name, Bygone Badass Broads features 52 remarkable and forgotten trailblazing women from all over the world. With tales of heroism and cunning, in-depth bios and witty storytelling, Bygone Badass Broads gives new life to these historic female pioneers. Starting in the fifth century BC and continuing to the present, the book takes a closer look at bold and inspiring women who dared to step outside the traditional gender roles of their time.
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Awesome history, heavy-handed political agenda
- By Charlie on 07-08-18
By: Mackenzi Lee
What listeners say about Bach, Beethoven, and the Boys
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Jack Frasier
- 03-02-19
funny and whimsical
very enjoyable and quick audiobook. only 3 hours or so. nice for funny history lesson
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1 person found this helpful
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- Lex Reviews
- 10-31-18
MARVELOUS
I highly recommend this to any student of music that has endured a 3:00pm music history class.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Jeri
- 04-11-20
The Most Fun You’ll Have Learning Something
A delightfully irreverent take on classical music 🎶 it is quite funny and definitely a great way to spend time. The narrator is a perfect fit for the material.
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- Ruffkutt
- 08-20-18
Wanted: More audiobooks from the author
Fun listen owed in large part to narrator JM George's patrician nobility accent which adds a Pythonesque quality. Would purchase Mr. Barber's other works as audiobooks with this form of narration.
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5 people found this helpful
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- MichaelP
- 05-23-22
Very Entertaining
Not a lot of new information of you have any background in Music History - BUT, VERY entertaining. Worth the time!
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1 person found this helpful